to the frame. “Now what?”
“Excellent!” the AI exclaimed in an excited tone. “Follow me to the machine, please.”
It took me to a larger room this time.
A curious contraption in gold-tone metal and black glass stood in the middle. Shaped like a long cylinder, it vaguely reminded me of tanning beds back on Earth. Except that unlike a tanning bed, this cylinder was completely closed, like a capsule.
“Is that how you get a massage on Neron?” I asked, wondering how exactly this worked.
“Yes. It has been programmed for an hour for you, but you will be able to adjust the settings as you go. The machine is very intuitive. It uses your own past experiences to design the best custom program for you.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“Enjoy.” The AI rolled out of the room, and the sliding door closed behind it.
The lid of the cylindrical machine in front of me silently opened, revealing a padded interior. It appeared cozy like a cocoon, with round, gold-framed openings in seemingly random locations on the sides of the capsule and inside the lid.
I stroked the gray-velvet-padded surface, suddenly thinking about the Colonel’s abs again.
It would be a long year living side by side with a man who had this effect on me. However, leaving him was the last thing I wanted to do, now.
My physical attraction to him was in no way criminal or forbidden. The Colonel was my husband, dammit. The whole of Voran already thought we were having sex as much and as often as we wanted.
The problem was, he didn’t seem to want me in that way, anymore.
“Once was enough for me,” he’d said when talking about Shula rejecting his marriage proposal.
Proud man that he was, I feared he would never forget my initial rejection, either. I didn’t regret my behaviour that first night. The timing had been wrong, and we didn’t know each other at all. Now, however, if the Colonel made another move on me, I wouldn’t reject him.
By now, I got to know him enough to appreciate and respect him as a person. He was a strong and reliable man like a rock, with a gentle side to him that made my insides melt. I wanted him. In every sense.
Had he so much as touched me in his home gym this morning, I wouldn’t be standing here, alone and sexually frustrated.
“Sooner or later you will want to be fucked by a man. Then, you’ll beg me for it.”
His words sounded prophetic now. This time, even the idea of begging didn’t seem that appalling.
“And it could only be me.”
Well, I didn’t want anyone else.
I sighed deeply. The gesture made my nipples rub against the smooth silk of the robe. Sparks of desire fluttered from my chest down to my thighs. The smooth caress of the silk robe against my skin only made it worse.
I ripped the bathrobe off, then climbed into the massage machine.
“Welcome,” a soothing voice flowed over me as the lid lowered down smoothly the moment I’d lain down. “Please close your eyes and focus on the vision of your mind.”
The vision of my mind?
Whatever the heck did that mean?
I did what I was told, though, closing my eyes. With the light inside the capsule dimmed, I could hardly see anything, anyway.
A cool strip of metal pressed to my forehead, circling my head. I jerked at the contact.
“Nothing to worry about here,” the voice reassured me as soothing music started to play in the background. “You are safe and calm.”
Calm? I wasn’t so sure about that.
A fine mist covered my skin with warm fragrant oil then a series of soft rubbery things rolled up and down my body, massaging every muscle under my skin.
“This is really nice,” I murmured.
“Please select a setting.”
A slideshow of images went through my mind. My bedroom in my parents’ house when I was little. A white-sand beach we had gone to while on vacation. A large rock in the valley behind my Grandma’s old house. The luxurious, round bed that used to be Colonel’s but was mine for the next ten and a half months.
“That one,” I whispered.
The picture no longer was in front of me, but around me. The machine seemed to have disappeared, as I lay on the bed in the Colonel’s bedroom, the starry night sky over the flowery canopy twinkling above me.
As the things massaged and rubbed my body, my thoughts went to the Colonel once again. The illusion of being in his house was so real, I started wondering where